The 1971 film Wake in Fright is regarded as one of the most daring Australian films ever made — Martin Scorsese called it “a deeply — and I mean deeply — unsettling and disturbing movie,” while Nick Cave claims it as “the best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence” — so why haven’t you been able to see it? For three decades, the film materials for the thriller (which has never appeared on home video in this country) were thought to be lost, until the original negatives were discovered in Phildadelphia, then restored for a return engagement at Cannes in 2009. Now, the film’s finally coming out in the U.S. beginning October 5, and you can see an exclusive clip of it here, which begins to set up the central premise: An educated teacher is driven to madness in a small Australian mining town, in a scenario that recalls Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. (Be warned, this clip’s a bit steamy and nearly NSFW.)
